Status of the NIST 3D imaging system Performance Evaluation Facility

This paper presents the status of an indoor artifact-based Performance Evaluation Facility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for 3D imaging systems, a terminology pre-standard, and a summary of the ranging protocol pre-standard. The indoor facility will be used to develop test protocols and performance metrics for the evaluation of terrestrial 3D imaging systems. The NIST facility was initiated in response to a workshop which was held at NIST in 2003 to determine future efforts needed to standardize 3D imaging system testing and reporting and to assess the need for a neutral performance evaluation facility. Three additional workshops have since been held at NIST with the most recent on March 2-3, 2006. These workshops provided further guidance in defining priorities and in identifying the types of measurements that are of most interest to the terrestrial scanning community. The two pre-standards were developed based on feedback from the workshops.